Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Like society, the diary is a world of useless secrets. Everything is there, yet there is nothing.
There is so much more to this world then outward appearances. Our society basks in the illusion of normalcy every day, and hides from the truth every night.
If Edith Wharton lived in the Age of Innocence, surely we now live in the Age of Deception.
* to know a lot of people I love pieces of, and to want to synthesize those pieces in me somehow, be it by painting or writing. * to know that millions of others are unhappy and that life is a gentleman's agreement to grin and paint your face gay so others will feel they are silly to be unhappy, and try to catch the contagion of joy, while inside so many are dying of bitterness and unfulfillment.
In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.
Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order... catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society.
Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.
i usedta live in the world really be in the world free & sweet talkin good mornin & thank-you & nice day uh huh i cant now i cant be nice to nobody nice is such a rip-off regular beauty & a smile in the street is just a set-up
All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
In 'Age of Innocence,' the opening flowers, that's a metaphor for the film, the Victorian veneer with the malevolence beneath it. We attempted to show that with flowers that start as sweet and then slowly become malevolent.
All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you'll die, and you'll probably be alone.
It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock-the private and the real, and the public and the artificial.
A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
all that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a great depression. we may even be hiding a third world war
I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up feeling fresh every morning, never raise their voices, only cook with organic food, and are equally at ease with the CEO and the PTA.
We live in a society and a culture and an economic model that tries to make everything look right.
We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
British culture loves the image of itself in the mirror; it doesn't want to look deep inside, behind the eyes, inside the brain, inside where those shivers and nightmares lie.
